Congo Prophet

Frederic Hunter served as a Foreign Service Officer in the United States Information Service in Brussels, Belgium, and, shortly after its independence, at three posts in the Republic of the Congo: Bukavu, Coquilhatville, and Léopoldville. He later became the Africa Correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor, based in Nairobi.A playwright / screenwriter, Hunter’s award-winning stage work, The Hemingway Play, was given a reading at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, presented at Harvard University’s Loeb Drama Center and produced by PBS’s Hollywood Television Theater series. Other plays have been performed at the Dallas Theatre Center, ACT in San Francisco, and the Ensemble Theater in Santa Barbara.Movies Hunter has written have been produced by PBS, ABC, and CBS. Research for his PBS drama Lincoln and the War Within led him to write the historical novel Abe and Molly: The Lincoln Courtship. He’s taught screenwriting at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, at UCSB, and at Principia College where he also taught Modern African Literature. Hunter’s Africa experience is the basis for several of his novels.

In Frederic Hunter’s Congo Prophet, we are in the Belgian Congo in 1921. Maurice Count Lippens, the newly appointed governor-general, is sent just 13 years after the end of the Congo Free State, King Leopold II’s exploited and terrorized colony, with the goal of reforming Congo’s administration and bringing the rule of law. Reforming the administration previously used to oppress Africans is much more difficult than it sounds. Belgium rules the millions of Congolese with only a few thousand administrators, plus the Force Publique, the Army that provides policing to the colony. The key stakeholders are the Roman Catholic church, Protestant missionaries, Belgian settlers, and the administration. Confronted with a Congolese healer who has attracted thousands to leave their homes, the stakeholders all want the healer killed, so that the situation can go back to “normal.” However, the healer has broken no laws. This is the Count’s dilemma: how can you bring the rule of law to a broken country? Congo Prophet brilliantly portrays the conundrum of colonial administration, the rule of law, and the meaning of justice. —Ted Anagnoson, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, Cal State Los Angeles